Don’t Expect to Find Little Green Men on New Exoplanet K2-155d

Kepler found some new exoplanets. Image courtesy of NASA Ames/ W Stenzel, Public Domain.




Joel Kontinen

This time there’s less fanfare and speculation. Two papers published in the Astronomical Journal introduce us to 15 new exoplanets some 200 light years from us.

The post promising candidate is K2-155d that orbits a bright red dwarf. It obviously has a radius 1.6 times that of Earth’s.

Researchers think that K2-155d “could be a super-Earth located within the habitable zone,” as an article in International Business Times put it.

Once again, they are speculating about water, but there’s a big hitch.

" ‘In our simulations, the atmosphere and the composition of the planet were assumed to be Earth-like, and there's no guarantee that this is the case,’ Teruyuki Hirano, the lead researcher of the new study, from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, said in a statement.”

And then come the problems: Dwarf stars tend to be unstable and bombard their planets with intense solar flares.

These planets are probably tidally locked like Mercury in our solar system, with the same side always facing its sun.

It is very likely that this applies to the Trappist-1 system and to Proxima-b, and now we’ll probably have to add K2-155d to the list of has-beens.

What is more, getting from being habitable to actually having life is an enormous leap that naturalistic processes cannot pull off.

Life, as Louis Pasteur showed, only comes from life.


Source:

Ashok, India Aishani. 2018. 15 New Exoplanets Discovered Near Solar System, One Could Have Liquid Water. International Business Times (3 March).

Darwinian Psychologist Wants to Create Human-Chimp Hybrids

Image courtesy of Delphine Bruyere, CC BY-SA 3.0.






Joel Kontinen


Human exceptionalism is a Darwinian enigma, but they are very reluctant to give up the notion that we are mere animals.

At times, they use bizarre means in trying to convince others of our assumed apehood.

Recently, an outlandish rumour surfaced. It claimed that in the 1920s a female chimpanzee was supposedly inseminated with human semen and gave birth to a “humanzee” in a US research centre that was established in the 1930s.

Russian biologist Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov (1870 –1932) also attempted to produce a human-chimp hybrid, but his experiments failed., as such a hybrid is biologically impossible.

Now, University of Washington psychology professor emeritus David P. Barash wants to use the gene-editing CRISPR technology to create human–chimp hybrid.

Barash hates Christianity and aims to show that humans are nothing more than apes though all the evidence points to creation.

Why, then, are some hybrids possible?

While lions and tigers are currently classified as different species, they belong to the same Genesis kind, and can thus produce ligers.

The same applies to zonkeys (donkey + zebra), geeps (goat + sheep) and grolars (grizzly bear + polar bear).

These hybrids show us exactly the opposite of what Prof. Barash wants us to believe. They confirm the Genesis after its kind principle

Source:

Smith, Wesley J. 2018. Darwinist David Barash Wants Us to Create “Humanzees”. Evolution News & Science Today. (9 March).

Earth’s Magnetic Field Is Still Decaying

Image courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, CC BY-SA 2.0.




Joel Kontinen

“For the past 160 years, the strength of the magnetic field has been decreasing at an alarming rate,” says a press release issued by the University. of Rochester.

University of Rochester professor John Tarduno and colleagues went to southern Africa to examine an area called known as the South Atlantic Anomaly.

They think that something spectacular is happening there.

“The magnetic field is generated by swirling, liquid iron in Earth’s outer core. It is here, roughly 1800 miles beneath the African continent, that a special feature exists. Seismological data has revealed a denser region deep beneath southern Africa called the African Large Low Shear Velocity Province. The region is located right above the boundary between the hot liquid outer core and the stiffer, cooler mantle. Sitting on top of the liquid outer core, it may sink slightly, disturbing the flow of iron and ultimately affecting Earth’s magnetic field.”

Earth’s magnetic field protects us from radiation coming from the Sun

Research has shown that Earth had a magnetic field from the beginning.
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The weakening of the magnetic field is a huge problem for those who believe in billions of years, so they have to believe that it is “a recurrent anomaly” and invoke magnetic reversals.

However, there is no known mechanism that could cause such reversals.

Source:

University of Rochester. 2018. New data helps explain recent fluctuations in Earth’s magnetic field (27 February).

Singing Blue Whales Defy Darwinian Explanations

Blue whale mother and calf. Image courtesy of Andreas Tille, CC BY-SA 4.0.




Joel Kontinen


Birds are not the only animals that like to sing. At least one fish species can also sing.

And there’s more. Natural Geographic reports on the singing skills of blue whales:

“The biggest animal to ever live is also the loudest, and it likes to sing at sunset, babble into the night, talk quietly with those nearby, and shout to colleagues 60 miles away.”

Previously. little was known about their singing, Now, “In the first effort of its kind, Ana Širović, an oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, and her team scoured a collection of more than 4,500 recordings of blue whale sounds taken from underwater microphones at over a dozen locations over 14 years, from 2002 to 2016, in southern California. The researchers then synced the recordings with the movements of 121 whales that had been tagged with suction-cup trackers. What they learned challenged many assumptions about these noisy beasts.”

They discovered that males did most of the singing.

It’s practically impossible to invoke evolution in explaining why three very different kinds of animals – birds, fish and marine mammals – like to sing.

Convergent evolution would not be a viable explanation.

Source:

Welch, Craig. 2018. Elusive Blue Whale Behavior Revealed by Their Songs. National Geographic (15 February).

Cambrian Shrimp Cared for its Offspring

Fuxianhuia protensa. Image courtesy of Nobu Tamura, CC BY-SA 4.0.



Joel Kontinen

A Cambrian shrimp “dated” at 520 million years cared for its offspring, a recently discovered fossil shows.

As Darwinians want to see some evolution here. they prefer to call Fuxianhuia protensa a shrimp-like creature.

Evolution cannot explain parental care, which fits in well with the creation model.

It seems that God gave animal mothers the instinct to care for their young.

The assumed Cambrian Era was a big dilemma for Darwin.

Recent discoveries, including soft tissues, have made it an even bigger headache for evolutionists.


Source:

Fox-Skelly, Jasmin. 2018. Fossil shows a mother caring for her young 520 million years ago. New Scientist (5 March).

Owls, Penguins and Kingfishers Inspire Quieter and More Efficient Bullet Trains

Bullet trains in Japan. Image courtesy of DAMASA, CC BY-SA 3.0.




Joel Kontinen

Design in nature is so obvious that it’s practically impossible to deny it.

The University of Guelph newsletter recounts how Japanese engineers solved the sonic boom problem caused by high-speed bullet trains that could reach a speed of 270 km /hour (170 mph).

But every time the train came out of a tunnel it caused a sonic boom that could be heard from 400 metres away.

It needed to be resigned. The research team solved the problem by drawing inspiration from the owl’s feather, the penguin’s belly and the kingfisher’s nose.

The resigned was ”10 per cent faster, used 15 per cent less electricity and travelled under the noise limit in residential areas.”

Unfortunately, writer Vicky Lin attributes the amazing design found in birds to Darwinian evolution, concluding: “Evolution has done a lot of research for us.”

However, Darwinian processes are blind. They can’t design anything. Nature abounds with intelligent solutions that defy evolutionary explanations. (See examples here, here, here, here and here.).

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made” (Romans 1:20, NIV).

Source:

Lin, Vicky. 2018. Sustainability solutions and technological innovations are regularly found in nature, writes Vicky Lin. Guelph Mercury (19 February).

Weird Supercreature Found in Japan

The tardigrade looks a bit like a bear. Image courtesy of E. Schokraie, U. Warnken, A. Hotz-Wagenblatt, MA. Grohme, S. Hengherr, et al. Comparative proteome analysis of Milnesium tardigradum in early embryonic state versus adults in active and anhydrobiotic state. PLoS ONE 7(9): e45682 (2012). Creative Commons (CC BY 2.5).




Joel Kontinen

Tardigrades might be tiny – only 0.5 mm (0.020 in) long – but they are amazingly tough.

They are already found in the Cambrian strata “530 million years” ago, which means that evolutionists see them as one of the oldest kinds of living fossils.


Known as water bears for their somewhat ursine appearance, they seem to thrive in extreme conditions, both cold ( -272 °C or -458 °F) and hot (150 °C or 300 °F). Moreover, they can fast ten years without even taking in water, and still survive.

There’s more. A tardigrade found by Japanese scientists in the Antarctic in 1983 was defrosted and it gave birth after being frozen for 30 years.

Recently, a new tardigrade species was found in the parking lot of an apartment building in Japan. Dubbed Macrobiotus shonaicus, it is perhaps even weirder than others.

Live Science points out a bizarre trait in this sturdy creature:

“Perhaps the weirdest aspect of M. shonaicus, though, is its eggs. The spherical eggs are studded with miniscule, chalice-shaped protrusions, each of which is topped with a ring of delicate, noodle-like filaments. These features might help the egg attach to the surface where it is laid, [tardigrade expert Kazuharu] Arakawa said. “

The tardigrade’s traits speak of a Designer who skilfully made every living creature.

Source:

Pappas, Stephanie. 2018. An Even-Weirder-Than-Usual Tardigrade Just Turned Up in a Parking Lot. Live Science (28 February).